


An (un)Likely Friendship

by KingLilith



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark Friendship, eventually this impacts the avengers (positively), they talk about everything; murder – boys – murdering boys, we’re ignoring the wintersoldier killed the Starks plotline, winteriron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 12:50:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16450286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingLilith/pseuds/KingLilith
Summary: It’s an unlikely friendship at first glance, but after their rocky start Tony and Natasha become really close.





	An (un)Likely Friendship

Natasha never apologises for doing her job, but she is sorry about spying on Tony and manipulating him. Honestly, she likes the man.

They are far more similar than a first glance would suggest, they both have an insane amount of red in their ledger that they are working hard to get set to right, both like a challenge and don’t know how to quit. They never admit to not knowing things, are very good at compartmentalising and pushing down feelings and trauma, and are experts in their chosen fields.

Their start is rocky, but once the Avengers are formed Natasha seeks Tony out. She doesn’t quite say sorry out loud, but Tony gets the message loud and clear. He doesn’t forgive her (even if he does so out loud), not yet, but they will get there. Natasha promises herself she will attempt to reach out.

She often makes these promises to herself, and usually it ends up in disappointment. But not this time.

Something about Tony makes her more talkative, more willing to show herself. And something in her makes Tony relax a fraction more and less likely to use humour as a defence.

It is strange, but far too quickly they grow close. Until one day she is sitting in Tony’s lab and she hears herself casually but frankly talking about how she hates the Redroom but is often grateful for the skill set it gave her. Tony just nods along and Natasha realises that somehow this has become normal between them.

Natasha isn’t sure how it happened, but she is grateful for it.

He listens, and while he doesn’t always understand, he never judges her for anything. In turn she finds she takes it seriously when Tony talks about his own unpleasant baggage. It is strange how this happened without her noticing, she is a spy, and one of the best at that, she should have noticed she gave a stranger this much information about herself.

But Tony is not a stranger, and hasn’t been for a while now.

*

Natasha and Tony hanging out a lot in turn means that Tony and Clint see more of each other. For reasons she doesn’t quite understand they are both a bit wary of each other at first, and she can see it might take a while before they are completely comfortable in the other’s company. She tries not to be too disappointed at this and instead makes sure that they sometimes do things together. She invites Tony to join Clint and her on the shooting range (Tony’s good with a weapon, and from the look on Clint’s face she wasn’t the only one who hadn’t fully made the connection with building and using the things) and in turn she invites Clint to Tony’s lab.

It works surprisingly well, and they are slowly becoming more used to each other.

“Pff Birdbrain, don’t be stupid. You weren’t the coolest guy in the fight, let alone the state. Even if I hadn’t been there, that cool move cap did with his shield would have won out.”Clint rolls his eyes and starts to leave. “Of course you’d say that, you love Cap.” “Clint, please. He’s Captain America, everybody loves him.”

“You don’t.” Natasha says quietly once the door seals itself behind Clint. “Most of the time I’m not sure if you even like him.”

Tony just looks tired and nods, rubbing a hand over his face. “Howard was obsessed with the guy.” He says softly. “I spent my entire childhood being unfavourably compared to him.” He leans in when she steps closer, she’s not quite touching but near enough to offer comfort. “I tried to _be_ him for a while. But there’s only so many times you can hear a guy’s name when being yelled at before you really start to hate him.”

“I’m trying very hard not to hate him.” Tony says quietly after a pause, looking surprised at his own openness. And perhaps Natasha isn’t the only one who had this insanely close friendship dropped on her without warning. “It doesn’t help that one of the first things he did was to compare me unfavourably to Howard.”

Natasha winces openly at that. Oh, yeah that had been a spectacular bad move Steve.

“It also doesn’t help that SHIELD has not properly introduced him to the modern world either.” He shoots Natasha a look

Natasha nods. Yeah, it was a great tactic in the beginning when it acted as a leash and control on an unknown variable, but Steve’s ignorance is quickly becoming more of a hindrance than a boon. Just yesterday she had seen him completely dismiss Tony when he attempted to talk to Steve about reparations that needed to be made for the damage their last fight did. The confused look and ‘that’s not our business’ Steve’s answer boiled down to showed a clear lack of understanding of the current social and political structures.

She makes a snap decision. “Yeah, fuck that.” Tony doesn’t even have the decency to look surprised at her quick denouncing of SHIELD’s methods, ah he already knows her so well. “I’ll start working on it with him, or will at least point him in the right direction. And I’ll see what I can do about changing that policy officially.”

Then again, she isn’t sure why they are surprised at Steve’s lack of understanding. He was almost completely uneducated when he enlisted, and while he was a great captain on the field, the Howling Commandos and been a bit of an anomaly and had lacked some of the structure and chain of command most military operations had. But Steve’s ignorance, whether trough circumstances, SHIELD, or something else, should not be Tony’s problem.

Tony gives a tiny nod and looks thoughtful for a moment before shaking his head.

“And Tones, it’s fine that you need some time to get used to him. Besides, he’s an idiot, so out of the field you can just ignore everything he says.” She gives him the ‘everyone but us is an idiot’ look and it startles a laugh out of Tony.

“Yeah. Big blond idiot. Gods, can’t you just imagine him as some high-school quarterback?”

Natasha grins at that. “He was one of the examples they used to explain the stereotype to me.” She admits.

After that the conversation devolves into giggles and trying to fit the avengers in the classic American high-school stereotypes.

*

A week after that conversation Natasha finally talks Tony into sparring together. She had been worried about his capabilities out of his suit for a while now, and had the suspicion that he sometimes overestimated his capabilities when in the suit drastically on occasion.

And while her estimation of him turns out to be mostly true, she also quickly finds out what a brilliant strategist he is. She’s not sure why she’s surprised at this. He’s especially good at large battles, somehow keeping track of everything at once and making snap decisions like a pro. Steve usually has ironman come in as air-support or just to blow shit up, but it’s clear that Tony can do so much more than that. She resolves to talk this over with Steve.

Tony seems to enjoy their sparring sessions as well, even more so when they devolve into discussions on tactics and battle strategy.

Talk of strategy and tactics also turns out to be something that Tony and Clint can find common ground in. Discussions between the three of them on tactics are becoming more and more animated, involving schematics and 3D projections. They even move out of the training rooms and into the living spaces or kitchen.

Bruce begins to look rather glassy eyed when he tries to follow their latest discussion, which just happens to take place in the kitchen. Clint has gotten JARVIS to project some statistics on the wall and Tony is waving his arms wildly to underline whatever he’s saying.

The debate gets rather heated, so Natasha is sure she’s the only one who notices when Steve walks in. He looks curious, but doesn’t interrupt and instead observes and frowns in thought at whatever Tony and Clint are saying at the moment.

A few moments later Natasha too forgets all about Steve because Clint is sprouting utter bullshit. She and Tony share a look before tag-teaming the guy.

The startled look on Tony’s face when Steve finally speaks up to completely decimate Clint’s point almost makes Natasha laugh out loud.

The hesitant smile Tony and Steve exchange after Clint droops of to lick his wounds gives her much warmer feelings.

One day when once again discussing battle tactics she accidentally confesses about her non-existent hacking skills. Or well, Tony notices when she goes blank-faced when he talks about something that Tony later tells her is a really basic concept. She is embarrassed, even if she tries not to show it, but had expected it to come out much sooner than this.

She doesn’t quite know herself how she had garnered a reputation for good hacking skills, but in private she confesses to Tony that those ‘skills’ mostly consist of putting an USB or something similar into a slot in a PC ad hoping someone else did their job correctly. She knows exactly what to attach to which cable to tap someone, but has very little idea about the actual coding that goes into it. ‘hacking’ as such is something that can and should be done remotely by specialists, so it was never a necessary skill for her to learn.

Tony seems to find that an absolutely wild concept and after some back and forth he offers to teach her at least some basics. She tries to wave it away at first, but Tony just lifts his eyebrow and points out how she is helping him with his training. And after some persuasion she quietly agrees to take some pointers from him (in secret of course, best nobody knows about this weak point of hers).

But she still feels… uncomfortable with taking so much help, even if it is from Tony. (And isn’t that a thought that would have shocked her not much more than a year ago.) Especially when Tony starts his ‘classes’ and it becomes clear how much she has to learn. She is also teaching him, true, but she still feels slightly off balance because of it.

Somehow this leads to a secret skills-exchange.

When she sees that the coding will be the work of years she offers to teach Tony Russian, which he accepts after only minimal persuasion on her part.

Tony then forces practical calculus on her. Calculating how much weight something can hold, how long the lever should be to lift something, things like that is surprising practical and useful in many ways. He is one of the few people who knows how lacking her education is in some places, and while sometimes she already uses some of these things in practice it is nice to know the calculations behind it.

The skills exchange ends when she forces Tony to do power yoga with her. This is Ultra Top Secret Tell Nobody Or You Die, and so much fun. They both have a lot of fun sneaking around and arranging meetings just so she can show Tony how to do basic yoga positions. She can’t help but giggle when Tony comes to the first secret meeting with a yoga mat under his arm and a T-shirt that says ‘Basic Bitch’.

*

When the rest of the Avengers finally find out Tony and Natasha have a close friendship they are varying degrees of confused. Clint knew, Thor and Bruce are surprised and pleased, but Steve seems to have some trouble fitting it into his worldview.

Steve is looking between them with a frown in his brow, as he tries to reframe the ‘fights’ he saw between them as ‘friendly discussions’. He looks at his lunch, clearly wondering how he missed this.

Eventually he hesitantly asks if they are dating, which prompts both Tony and Natasha to pull a disgusted face.

“Dating? Are you insane?” Tony declares, his face stuck like he smelled something bad. “She’s like… like-” He gropes around for words.

“Like my sister.” Natasha finishes for him.

“Yeah,” Tony nods, his face once more smoothed out. “we’re like sisters.”

Steve blinks, clearly not sure what part of the conversation he wants to focus on. “You’re a man.” He eventually just says dumbly.

Natasha shoots Tony a look that he translates as ‘dumb quarterback stereotype in action’, and he grins at her in agreement before answering.

“Traditional gender norms are so passé darling, don’t try to label me.” Tony says dramatically and then grins. “Besides, I can play ‘sister’ if you really want me to, I would look really good in a skirt.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

The Avengers standing in the kitchen must be getting whiplash from how quickly they keep looking between them. But neither Natasha or Tony has no pity for them. Honestly, half of them are spies. Or super soldiers, whatever, same difference. How can they not have known about their friendship? It’s not like they have been hiding it. Well, except the yoga, nobody needs to know about that.

Steve is still there looking at them dumbly, well, mostly Tony now. His face has gotten quite red and he is clearly looking for something appropriate to say. Natasha wonders how far he’s gotten with the ‘welcome to the modern world’ package SHIELD made for him.

Tony gives Natasha an exaggerated pout and does his best to look sad. “So mean.”

“You do look great in leggings.” She assures him as if Tony didn’t know this already.

Tony grins. “Good enough. I’ll take it.”

He gives Natasha a ‘let’s leave these losers in the dust’ look, and she replies with a nod. They exit the kitchen together before anyone can say anything else, Steve still slightly red in the face and looking for a reply.

*

Usually when Natasha went on a mission there would be no contact for the duration, but rarely did her assignments last for more than a few days. Her face was too recognisable these days for any real infiltration work, so nowadays she was mainly brought in as an expert near the end of a mission.

So when it took almost two full weeks for Tony to get a text from her he is both angry and relieved.

Apparently there is something big going on, and she and Steve won’t be back for a bit. It isn’t something for the Avengers, but rather something deeply personal he guesses from the way she writes. She ended the text with a promise of more information to come soon, so he holds out hope.

Texts come in sporadically over the next few weeks, and it takes a while for Tony to piece the story together. Apparently Cap’s old buddy was alive all this time, Hydra turned him into some brainwashed assassin and he had helped in training Natasha when she was a kid.

Tony isn’t entirely clear on how the guy was still alive, or any other details for that matter, but what she sent is enough for him to judge that his sister had a major soft spot for this guy.

So when he eventually gets a text from her asking if it’s okay that they bring him back to the tower, of course he says yes.

*

Having the winter soldier (or James, as he chose to be called after a few weeks) in the tower, no matter how well his road to recovery is going, is stressful for Natasha. She changes between seeing him as an old friend and seeing him as a threat, and back again, faster than Tony can blink. So Tony is really happy Rhodey is back in town to provide a stabilising presence and distraction for both of them.

He is really happy that Natasha and Rhodey got on well from the get go. Because yeah, they are his best friends, so they should be friends too. And they are. Which is great. Unless they gang up on Tony like they’re doing now.

“I can’t believe you listened to Clint. Aren’t you supposed to be a genius?”

“Ow, so mean honeybunch.” Tony says, dramatically splaying his hand over his heart to convey the extent to which Rhodey hurt him.

“You never listen to Clint’s dumb ass, so why did you now?” Tony knows from the look on Natasha’s face that she’s going to back up Rhodey on this all the way.

“He said it would be fine!” He tries to defend himself. “How was I supposed to know the tracksuit mafia is actually a real thing. Come on, you have to admit that sound like something out of a comic.”

“Even if it does, that doesn’t mean you should let such incompetent asshole get the drop on you.” Natasha say, clearly personally offended at the fact that someone she is friends with could be incompetent enough to nearly get kidnapped by a bunch of losers in Addidas. Rhodey is standing next to her nodding his agreement.

“I didn’t think anything would happen, and Clint said it was fine so I wasn’t expecting anything.” He tries to deflect again.

Natasha narrows her eyes and then resolutely turns to Rhodey, completely ignoring Tony’s further existence. “We need to up his training.”

Rhodey nods in agreement. “Yeah, I’ll help you put together a schedule.”

“Oi, that’s me you’re talking about, how about you talk about that shit with me instead of each other.” Tony suggest politely like the well-mannered man he is.

“No,” Rhodey says without looking at him. “you can’t speak. You almost got napped by the fucking _tracksuit_ mafia. Which is a new low point in all of our lives.”

And yeah. They kind of have a point. So for once Tony does the smart thing and shuts up.

*

The more that James gets some semblance of a personality, the more the Avengers realise what kind of relationship Steve and James had. It is clear that everyone is determined to enjoy this as much as they can.

“Stevie?” Clint says in a delighted tone. “He calls you Stevie?” He looks as if it’s Christmas and his birthday all rolled into one.

“Oh gods.” Tony says with wide eyes, an ecstatic grin and a grand sweeping arm-gesture Steve doesn’t get. “You’re totally the younger brother.”

“I am not.” Steve says, and yeah, that might have been more convincing if he hadn’t sounded higher pitched and louder than usual.

The worst thing is that James is nodding in agreement.

“He was exactly as bad as you’re thinkin.” The asshole says. “Always trying to steal my stuff and needing me to pull him out of fights. And in return the ungrateful brat would try to tell on me when I did something he didn’t approve of.”

“You usually made me stay quiet. There was so much blackmail.” Steve mumbles, not knowing if it would be in his advantage or not. From the faces of the other avengers it would seem that it confirmed more than denied his ‘little brother’ status.

He groans, no knowing what to say to make them stop believing this asshole over him. “I’m Captain America now, even if I was back then, I’m not anymore, Buck!” Steve says hoping that these stupid grinning assholes that he calls friends and colleagues get the message.

“Oh don’t worry Stevie,” James says with an over the top sigh “you’ll always be my little brother to me, no matter how many pounds you gain.”

That gets a lot of laughs. Even Bruce is grinning delightedly.

Steve groans and puts his head in his arms. This wasn’t what he had envisioned when he brought Bucky back to the tower. “I can’t believe I used to like you. Looked up to you even. And all this time you were just an asshole waiting to humiliate me.”

Natasha pats him on the shoulder and smiles sweetly. “There, there. It’s very normal for younger children to look up to their older siblings. It’s also more common than most people know for a younger brother or sister to follow and join the armed forces when an older sibling has already enlisted.”

Steve groans. “Urgh, not you too.”

“Oh,” James, the grinning traitor, says. “so you didn’t rant about following me into the army, keeping each other safe and – ”

“Buckkk” Steve absolutely does not whine, cutting James off.

For some reason this makes everyone laugh again.

*

“What about geese.” Clint asks before spooning a disgustingly large amount of yoghurt into his mouth.

“No.” Says Natasha without looking up from her tablet.

“Whoa, I just heard that last bit of the conversation, but might I just say I agree wholeheartedly with Natasha.” Tony says, walking in still wearing a sharp suit, clearly only just returning from some business at SI. “Geese are all evil, and nothing you say will change my mind on that.” He continues loosening his tie and waves his arms at Natasha with a pathetic face until she undoes his cufflinks for him.

“They are not.” Clint replies, incensed. “And if you would just let me have a dog then we wouldn’t even be having this discussion at all.”

Natasha sighs. “We are not having this conversation again Clint. You will not get a guard dog, or a guard goose for that matter.”

Tony just stands there and nods empathically, like the asshole that owns the tower and can dictate who or what is allowed in it that he is.

“But they are used as guard animals.” Clint is not willing to give this up without some kind of fight. “They were and still are used to guard farms, mostly in Europe.

“No.” The creepy sisters say in unison, not caring that they are destroying Clint’s dreams.

“I don’t care how often you demonstrate your ability to google things Clint, I am never allowing an animal permanent residence on the top floors of the tower.” Tony says.

“Urgh fine, whatever. Be boring. See if I care.” Clint says like the mature adult he is.

It is silent for a moment.

“But what about chickens?”

Natasha and Tony share a look that Clint doesn’t get, and then move out of the room, completely in sync like they’re one person in two bodies, leaving Clint behind.

“Was that a yes on the chickens?” He asks. “Guys? Hello, guys?”

*

Steve just sat down on the couch after a long mission when James storms into the room and flings himself almost on top of him. “I am ruined, absolutely ruined.” James groans, pushing his face into the couch pillows. Steve had tensed, alarmed when James had all but burst into the room, but now relaxes again and grins.

“So you finally saw Tony fight up close, huh.” He says knowingly while James just makes pitiful noises into the couch. Buck had always had a thing for competence, and seeing Tony up close in battle blowing shit up had probably combined all James’ favourite things in the universe. Unlike Steve and Tony’s horrible start and admittedly still occasionally strained relationship, Buck and Tony had been making awful jokes together within minutes of meeting.

Steve rolls his eyes at James’s dramatics when he just keeps making noises into the couch pillows. “Buck, you’ve had a crush on him practically since you saw him, I don’t see what difference this last battle would make, even if he was particularly in form today.” James had been running backup for the Avengers for a while now, but this had been the first time he had joined the fray, and so probably one of the first times he’d actually seen Tony kick ass up close.

James doesn’t reply, instead he sits up, grabs Steve’s face and smushes his cheeks together so Steve has no choice but make an unfortunate looking fish-mouth.

“How can I not have seen it before?” James asks, not really paying attention to the way he is squishing Steve’s cheeks in uncomfortable ways and instead looked around the room as if it held the answers. “I knew he was beautiful and amazing and so smart but... “ James trails off and gets a faraway look in his eyes while Steve struggles in trying to remove the invading hands from his face so he can reply. Instead of recognising Steve’s struggles and letting go James just squeezes tighter and looks from the corner of the room to Steve’s face so fast he might have given himself whiplash. He looks wide-eyed but serious as he brings his own face closer to Steve’s and ignores the way Steve kept pulling on his wrists. “I’m gonna marry that man.” He says gravely before he finally lets go of Steve’s face to dramatically pace up and down the room.

Steve just rolls his eyes again and rubs his cheeks to hopefully re-induce some blood flow while James tells him in way to much detail about all the reasons he wanted to marry Tony. “Maybe let the marriage stuff wait for a while and just go on a date first, eh.” Steve says when his face finally felt normal again.

James shoots him a wide grin and gets close enough again to throw his arms around Steve. Steve reached up automatically to protect his face, but James isn’t paying attention and instead just hugs his shoulders as he beams at him. “That is brilliant! See Stevie, even you’ve got good ideas sometimes.”

“Urgh, Buck, do you even-“ But Steve is cut off as James’s hand comes to rest down on the top of his head and pushes all his hair into his eyes and mouth. “Urgh, gross.” Steve sputters while James starts to brainstorm date-ideas, not at all paying attention to where Steve has started to choke on his own hair.

“Bucky –” He whines as he tries to not get anymore hair in his mouth while he ineffectively pulls on James’s arm to remove the hand from his head. It was the metal one, so it didn’t really work. That was so unfair.

Eventually James notices that Steve is literally eating his own hair, so he stops his ranting, lets go and gives him a patented exasperated look and starts to open his mouth before getting distracted again by thoughts of Tony.

“Oh Stevie, he’s way too good for me.”

“Jup.” Steve easily agrees before straitening himself out and leaning back on the couch. He and Tony still weren’t quite what he’s call friends, but they had been getting better and he had no problem recognising Tony’s better qualities if it meant Bucky would suffer for a bit.

James’s face was going through a series of hilarious expressions before settling on something between panic and determination. He started babbling about wooing strategies when Steve eventually took pity on him and cut in. “Everyone is way too good for you, ya idiot. That’s never stopped you before.” He rolled his eyes at James’s pathetic face. “ya’know, you can still try.”

James gives a weak glare but leaned in close again, this time mercifully keeping his hands away from Steve’s head, instead he jabs at Steve’s arm, something Steve can’t leave un-retaliated of course. They shuffle around on the couch pushing each other around the way they had done since they were kids, until eventually Steve sits on the couch almost like a normal human and James is spread out over the length of it with his head pillowed by Steve’s legs. Steve’s hands are caught by James’s and somehow that devolves into a thumb-war.

“Just bring your A-game and try.” Steve says when he sees James still look a bit uncertain when they finish their wrestling. “Of course I will,” James says imperiously while squirming around a bit to get comfortable, his face something between cheerful and besotted. “now tell me everything you know about Tony Stark.”

*

Steve is sketching on the sofa when a conversation happening in the adjacent room catches his attention. He should be working on his homework, an essay he promised to write to show his understanding of the emancipation of several groups in America. He isn’t quite sure how he came to agree to writing it, but he vaguely remembers a very stern looking agent Hill giving him the stink eye, and then it just happened.

“Of course you could bench press me,” Tony is saying. “but the question is why you would want to.”

He wonders why it is that Tony always has such weird conversation. Sure, the guy is great for discussing battle-tactics (which, yeah, sometimes gets heated, but that’s why it is a discussion) but every other time Steve talks to him or hears him have a conversation it’s always so weird.

“No, no no.” Clint buts in, “The question is how many times.”

“More often than you, that’s for sure.” Replies Natasha, clearly spoiling for a fight.

Steve casts a look at where his unfinished essay is laying on the coffee table. Does everyone in the future have conversation like this, he wonders. He hasn’t seen anything in any of the history projects he is doing about bench pressing your friends, but then again, that would probably not be something an historian would write about.

“You know what, it’s on. Let move to the gym and see who can do the most.”

Natasha clearly is not about to let Clint’s enthusiastic challenge go unanswered, and Steve can sense the ‘fight me’ energy she is putting out from a room away. Tony, of course, is happily edging them on by telling Natasha she better not lose to an idiot like Clint and by telling Clint that, should he per chance win, Tony will start working on those arrows he asked about.

Steve shakes his head when the trio finally moves down to the gym. He’ll ignore the essay for a little more, just until he fixes his stupid shading in this horror of a sketch.

“Bet I could bench press him more often than those two combined.” James mutters sulkily from next to Steve on the couch.

*

Why do all these words have so many consonants?” Tony questions a bit hysterically “Who the fuck came up with this train wreck of a language. And why does the stupid structure keep changing.”

“In English you derive meaning depending on word-order and syntax, in Russian it is largely based on the endings of nouns. The order of the words is not that important.” Natasha lectures already feeling the strain this lesson is about to have on her. One of the things that she learned about Tony early on is that he takes things that he doesn’t understand as a personal affront. This usually is great, because it makes him work harder, but after prolonged exposure Natasha finds it tiring on occasion.

“There is a lot of it is memorisation, which you’re great at, but now need to get a feel for the endings and conjugations.” She says, knowing the nod to how far he has already come will sooth some of his worries.

“A feel,” Tony grumbles. “what kind of advice is that.”

“The kind I’m giving you.”

“Oh come on.” Tony can’t help but whine. “Can’t you cut me some slack?”

Natasha lifts an eyebrow. “Like you cut me some slack when you hid a random semicolon in my script?”

Tony grins. Oh yeah, clearly thinking back to how fun that had been. For him. Luckily for both of them only one look at Natasha and her ‘you’re threading on thin fucking ice honey’ expression makes him put the grin away.

“Fine, whatever. Let’s cop a feel, and make Russian our bitch.” He stops and scrunches his nose. “Okay, delete that, that sounded way more sexually aggressive than I meant for it to.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “Let’s just get started. Now repeat after me-”

*

When Steve enters the kitchen and sees that the only two occupants are Tony and James who, like the grown men they claim to be, are making cow-eyes at each other talking about anything but the topics they want to talk about, he knows it’s time for some revenge. Bucky has been razzing him his whole life it seems, and he deserves some payback.

He makes his breakfast and starts eating before striking up a conversation with Tony.

“So,” Steve says turning towards Tony “has Bucky given you any of his horrible poetry yet?”

Tony looks up from his on breakfast and blinks in surprise. “What?”

“Nothing.” James quickly interjects, coming up to Steve and trying to, not so subtly, push a smirking Steve out of the kitchen. But since Steve made sure to be sitting down and already eating when he started this Bucky has little success.

“Oh Tony bologna my tiny macaroni.” Steve says in a sing-song voice with a smirk on his face.

“I do not sound like that!” James has red creeping in his face, and his voice went a bit higher than it usually is, so Steve counts it as a success. Especially when he alternates between trying to remove Steve from the kitchen and looking like he wants to drown himself.

“Do you really write poetry.” Tony asks in a far too delighted tone of voice, breakfast now forgotten.

“No!, Well, maybe. Why? Do you…” James doesn’t quite seem to know how to continue that sentence, and instead just trails off and tries to look like he doesn’t want to drown himself.

“All us thirty’s boys write poetry.” Steve helpfully continues. “What can I say, it was a thing. Bucky is just exceptionally bad at it.”

Tony grins. “Well, I can safely say I have never been compared to macaroni before, so A plus for creativity at least.” He looks at James who seems to have regained some control over himself, much to Steve’s disappointment. “But well, I’ll take any form of flattery I can get.”

“I haven’t actually written anything, Stevie’s just being a little punk.” James says, trying to salvage the situation. “But if I did, I would find something better to compare you to than macaroni.” He shoots Steve a look that Steve has no problem returning. Tony seems to be enjoying the situation and looks from Steve to Bucky and back again like it’s a tennis match.

“Oh,” Says Steve, unwilling to give his friend his dignity back. “like what?”

James looks at Tony for a moment in genuine contemplation and then smiles. “Well, there’s probably a lot of poetry about stars that I could plagiarise.”

Tony looks flattered but a bit confused. “Stars? Why stars?”

James shrugs, looking confident despite the horrible start of the conversation. “Stars in your eyes and a star in your chest. Seems appropriate.”

Steve knows he’s lost this round (again, damnit) when Tony lets out a soft ‘oh’ and then focuses back on his food with a slight blush on his face. Steve doesn’t need to look back when he leaves the kitchen in a huff to know that the expression Bucky is wearing is both smug and lovelorn.

*

Natasha continues to surprise herself with how easy it is to talk to Tony. She’ll think she’s in control of the situation and then suddenly, BAM, she’s talking about her feelings.

Somehow a conversation that was about the fabric of her new suit turned into talking how upset she sometimes was at being a women. It was hard being a female assassin, nobody took you seriously and there were all these weird standards and preconceptions people had, even when the business was murder.

“They even teach us differently.” She hears herself say, not sure if she ever admitted this to someone other than herself. “Part of it is biology and muscle-mass differences, of course, but some of it is just plain old sexism.”

She puts the food down that she has in her hands but hasn’t taken a bite of for the duration of this trainwreck of a conversation, and turns to fully face Tony who is next to her on the couch. They are in his lab and had intended on discussing the specs of her new suits during dinner, and then having some fun blowing things up. But instead she went and caught feelings somehow. Again.

“One of the things is that they didn’t allow us to grunt.” She makes a motion in the air at Tony’s curious look. “Some sounds or expelations of air can help you control your body and muscles, tennis is a famous example, I think. Those sounds they make aren’t just for fun, it actually helps them hit harder.”

“The men were allowed to do that.” Tony says, immediately knowing where she is going with this.

“And we weren’t.” She finishes. “And it’s not like it gives you much of an edge, but still…” She trails off, not sure how to continue. Instead she leans into Tony taking comfort from his presence. Even if she isn’t sure why it calms her.

“Yeah,” Tony says softly. “That sucks.”

They sit silently for while.

“Food’s cold now.” Natasha eventually says.

“Yeah, well. It wasn’t that spectacular to begin with.” Tony shifts until he can look at her. He has to look up, as Natasha is slightly taller, even when slumped against him. “Wanna go up and eat some toast and shame Cap into apologising for only having one woman on the team?” He says, clearly trying to cheer her up.

Natasha grins her ‘you know me so well’ grin and then puts on a slightly offended yet innocent face. “You have exactly one woman and one person of colour on the team Steve, what is this, some Hollywood film trying to fill its diversity quota?”

Tony returns the expression. “And Rhodey, isn’t even properly on the team, is that thirty’s mentality still rearing its ugly head?”

They laugh and Tony tugs her of the couch. “C’mon, I wanna see how red he gets, James will probably help.”

“Oh yes _James_ ,” She stresses the name while giving Tony a look that is definitely over-kill for her usual manner but she enjoys teasing him about his little crush. “will absolutely help if you smile prettily at him.” Tony rolls his eyes but can’t much help the ridicules fond expression that takes over his face. He tries to hide it, she knows Tony thinks too old for facial expressions like that, but she is glad that he still can’t stop it. It makes her laugh while she exits the room dragging him along, as she continues teasing him all the way upstairs.

And, well, he did spent a lot of time gushing to her about the first official date he and James will have tomorrow, so it’s not wholly undeserved.

*

Clint and Natasha are sitting in the common room when James walks in. Or well, Natasha is sitting on the couch and Clint is laying on the ground, some computer game in front of his face and his hearing-aids next to him on the ground, clearly not willing to pay attention to anything that is not his screen.

“Ready for your date?” Natasha asks from the couch where she’s reading some business magazine that both Pepper and Tony recommended to her.

“Jup.” James grins. “I’m on my way now, so if you have any last minute advice…”

Natasha gives him a look over the top of her magazine. “Why, you almost sound like haven’t been obsessively preparing for this date for ages.”

James grins, but doesn’t deny it.

Natasha rolls her eyes. “Relax, you’ll both be fine, have fun.”

Clint makes a noise from where he’s laying on the floor and presses the buttons on his console rather franticly. It might have been a noise of encouragement or agreement, but its rather ruined by the cursing that follows. It seems that he lost whatever level he was on.

Natasha shakes her head. “Now go, Tony’s been ready for at least an hour. I suggest you hurry up and find him before he gets distracted by something shiny and forgets about you in favour of making another robot.”

James just grins and gives a mock-salute. But then still takes off at a rather fast pace, clearly not willing to take the chance.

Natasha rolls her eyes at him and puts down her magazine in favour of her tablet. She still has a few lines of coding to try and understand for her after-date gossip and study session with Tony tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> It was supposed to be only about Tony and Natasha's relationship, but then winterIron happened somehow.


End file.
